The fast-food industry claims the California minimum wage law is costing jobs. Its numbers are fake

scottywh@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 516 points –
The fast-food industry claims the California minimum wage law is costing jobs. Its numbers are fake
yahoo.com
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I'm shocked that multi billion dollar corporations would lie, take advantage of their own employees, and act like they're the victims.

I mean, what do they have to gain?

Edit: y'all know I was joking right?

Corporations are big into lobbying. "Studies" like this help them to convince lawmakers to make decisions that benefit them.

In this case, they might not be able to easily lower minimum wage, but they can say that it's been a burden and try to get a break in other ways.

Edit in response to the edited comment above:
Poe's Law, should have included a "/s" at least. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

They're already getting a break. I live in California and a fucking McDonald's "value" meal is $16! Plus it tastes like shit, is always poorly prepared and the employees still look miserable as fuck. They increased pay $3.50 and act like the fucking economy is going to implode because people aren't willing to pay $20 for shitty food anymore. So instead they're blaming it on the poor bastards working there because it's the only good option for some around here. Fucking greedy pieces of shit, makes me so angry.

You've got to drop a "/s" at the end. This is the internet, and there are a lot of opinions out there. Plenty of people would have asked your question in seriousness.

Poe's Law is an adage stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken for a sincere expression of those views. This law is often cited in discussions about online behavior, where satire and genuine extremism can be difficult to distinguish, particularly in written text without the aid of tone or facial expressions. The concept was named after Nathan Poe, who first articulated it in 2005 during an online discussion about creationism.

After DECADES of seeing Prices Stagnate I'm FINALLY starting to see them Increase! It's been LITERALLY DECADES with them NOT going up at ALL! But NOW they FINALLY are because of this Minimum Wage Law!

As I recall prices have been going up for a long time. Nationally I believe all fast food chains have increased prices way beyond the rate of inflation for the past 12 years.

They know, their comment was sarcastic.

That was the least sarcastic and most rational comment ever made in the history of earth since jesus slapped hitler.

This would be the same fast-food industry that wants to replace drive-through workers with AI, right?

Can't forget those shareholders! It really worries me what things are going to look like in 30-50 years time. There's only so much you can squeeze out of people until there's nothing left.

In 50 years?? Bad water wars and mass migration caused by climate change

I'm starting to doubt whether allowing "industries" to speak as a collective should be allowed in a just society

Yea well citizens unitied and now corps have more rights than human lives.

I love how Serve Safe™ has a monopoly for USA food certs.

It's owned by the National Restaurant Association of America

They wanna bring it back to 1919 lol.

I'm just a 38/yr old burnt out line cook, now disabled with Fibromyalgia but yea the entire industry should just 🔥 I feel.

COVID unemployment payments taught me how much the government thinks minimum wage should be, in the cruelest sickest way lololol. 🥹

This is what happens when you try to extract more and more value off the top of labor, without any added value other than line must go up. When suppressing wages is the only way to improve corporate profits, profits are capped and stockholders hate this. This is in theory suppose to encourage innovation to increase efficency (without just resorting to skeleton crews or pressuring labor for more output). Monopolies stop innovating due to market control and look at other methods of increasing profits with leverage rather than market competitiveness.

Firms have leverage over non organized labor even when they're much smaller than monopolies. Especially at the lower end of the pay spectrum. Running the economy not at full employment guarantees there's a replacement waiting for a worker attempting wage negotiations. But at the whole spectrum, unless there's a significant labor shortage in some skill set, individual workers have much more limited negotiating power than firms. So firms employ labor abuse instead of innovation even when they're small. Perhaps even at the small business stage.

It's true the biggest issue with capitalism is that it's 'not ok' for that line to go down, ever. It's ridiculous. A healthy business can ride things out up and down over time if they have good policies and smart planning. Prioritizing shareholders above all is a shell game.